33 posts from February 2010

February 26, 2010

The honorees are Martha Bell, Philip Castillo, Gunny Harboe, Jim Loewenberg and Peter Weismantle. The recognition is for nationally-significant contributions to the profession of architecture. Here's the news release:

February 25, 2010

Chicago architect Helmut Jahn has a promising but imperfect plan for a high-speed rail station in Chicago. It’s not much more than a sketch, certainly not a finished blueprint. Yet it deserves to be taken seriously, if only because it should kick-start a much-needed debate over the right place for the hub of the Midwest’s just-funded high-speed rail network.

Jahn, who has long excelled at transportation facilities, has prepared the plan for Reuben Hedlund, a civic-minded zoning lawyer who headed the Chicago Plan Commission from 1991 to 1997. Hedlund does not appear to be in a position to profit from the project, which he calls the Daniel Burnham Central Station in honor of the great turn-of-the-century Chicago planner. So the proposal can be considered clean, even if it would likely send the values of nearby properties skyrocketing.

The plan calls for the demolition of a brick U.S. Postal Service building in the 300 block of West Harrison Street, which stands just southeast of the old Chicago Main Post Office astride the Congress Expressway, and is mainly used by carriers who deliver mail to the South and West Loop (below). In its place would rise a riverfront office or condo tower and a low-slung train concourse with a swooping roof that would reach out like a tail, sheltering tracks and train platforms below street-level (above).

Let’s set aside the biggest practical hurdle to this vision—whether the Postal Service would sell the building or join private developers in a partnership to rebuild the site.

Advocates expect high-speed rail to make its debut in Chicago by 2014, in the wake of President Barack Obama’s decision to award $8 billion to the concept nationwide. That means Chicago and Mayor Richard Daley have a choice: Are they going to get on board and create a railroad gateway worthy of the city--or are they going to let a golden opportunity pass, cramming new passengers into an already-jammed Union Station?

First came last year's debt crisis humbled the once high-flying Persian Gulf emirate and slowed the construction of scores of skyscrapers. Then, this month, the observatory at the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, had to be shut down following an electrical malfunction. Now, according to news reports, a leak in the giant aquarium at the mega-mall next to the supertall skyscraper has forced the mall to be evacuated.

Fear not. Sharks are not snapping away at shoppers in the massive Dubai Mall. The BBC reports: "The mall owners said the leak appeared in a panel joint in the tank and was immediately fixed by engineers."

February 24, 2010

John Zukowsky, who founded the Art Institute of Chicago's department of architecture, is back in town. On March 1, he'll start a new job as interim director of the Pritzker Military Library, located at 610 N. Fairbanks Court. John's most recent gig was as chief curator of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City. It's good to have him back in Chicago.

February 23, 2010

Philadelphia architects KieranTimberlake on Tuesday won a high-profile competition for a new American embassy in London, as the Philadelphia Inquirer's architecture critic, Igna Saffron, reports. The runners-up included two Pritzker Prize winners--Thom Mayne and his firm, Morphosis Architects of Santa Monica, Calif., and New York's Richard Meier and his eponymous firm.

My colleague at the Los Angeles Times, Christopher Hawthorne, praises the winning plan for not merely symbolizing openness. Instead, Hawthorne writes, the design "aspires to a different and broader set of values, primarily having to do with ecological responsibility and neighborliness within a tight urban fabric." Read more here.

But New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff is mixed bordering on negative. He zings the design as a "bland glass cube...[that] has all the glamor of a corporate office block" and goes on to call it "an eye-opening expression of the irresolvable tensions involved in trying to design an emblem of American values when you know it may become the next terrorist target."

Bloomberg's James Russell also weighs in--less positive than Hawthorne, less negative than Ouroussoff. He says the "ambivalent" design "perfectly sums up the extraordinarily difficult Obama moment."

Chicago architect Ralph Johnson and his firm, Perkins+Will, were on a short list for the project, but did not make it to the final round.

There's a clinical precision to the demolition of the Cabrini-Green high rise at 660 W. Division St., as recorded in this moving time-lapse video that I discovered yesterday. The wrecking crane starts on the building's flanks and methodically works its way inward, hacking off one structural bay at a time, until there's nothing left. In a sense, things have come full circle. A building built according to the gospel of architectural rationalism dies a rationalist death---cool, surgical, with none of the spectacular dynamiting that accompanied the infamous demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe public housing project in St. Louis (below).

The video is the work of Ryan Flynn, who lives across the street from 660 W. Division. The blogger Megan Cottrell posted the video on her site, and it then was picked up on the yochicago.com Web site, where I came across it.

The 660 W. Division building was part of the northern half of Cabrini-Green, the William Green Homes. Its high-rises had exposed concrete exteriors--"the whites," as Cabrini residents called them, as opposed to "the reds," the high-rises to the south of Division distinguished by their red-brick infill. The Green Homes were named for Chicago labor leader William Green and were built from 1959 to 1962. Pace Associates were the architects. Surely they never contemplated that their work would come to this end, scattering the buildings' residents to the winds.

February 22, 2010

Emporis, the global building database, on Tuesday will name the residential and hotel tower, located in the 200 block of North Columbus Drive and best known for its spectacularly undulating balconies, its 2009 skyscraper of the year.

"Members of the jury praised Aqua for its fascinating shape, whose appearance changes dramatically depending on the perspective. It was also cited as a brilliant technical achievement for the precision of its construction, and lauded as an application of green design innovations to an extremely large building project," Emporis said in a news release.

The honor, known as the Emporis Skyscraper Award, has been given since 2000 and recognizes excellence in aesthetic and functional design.

It has previously gone to such high-rises as Lord Norman Foster's Hearst Tower in New York City and Santiago Calatrava's Turning Torso Tower in Malmo, Sweden.

This marks the first time that the prize, which is given annually to a building at least 100 meters tall that was completed within the award year, has gone to a Chicago skyscraper.

The second prize winner was the O-14 high-rise in Dubai, whose perforated exterior provides a unique shield against the desert sun. (The building was not occupied when I attempted to see it in Dubai last month.)

Emporis editors from 67 countries make nominations for the prize and select the winners. Here are the jury's top results:

Amtrak has asked seven architectural and real estate firms to submit proposals to redevelop a key part of Chicago's Union Station and plans to select a winning proposal by the end of May.

The firms include the Chicago office of architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; Chicago developer U.S. Equities Realty and the Chicago office of Jones Lang LaSalle, which currently manages Union Station for Amtrak.

The firms are being asked to come up with plans for Union Station's neo-classical Headhouse building (above), which is bounded by Clinton, Canal, Jackson and Adams streets.

"This is a pretty blank sheet of paper," said Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari. "We will be looking for some creative, imaginative and transportation-oriented uses of the building."

The request for proposals comes amid a sputtering economy and the prospect of more people using the already-overcrowded station, which serves Metra commuter trains as well as Amtrak's long-distance and regional routes. The Obama administration recently awarded $8 billion in funds for the development of high-speed rail networks, including a Midwestern network with a hub in Chicago.

"Certainly everything points to us having more service," Magliari said.

February 19, 2010

Leading figures in the field of museum architecture and design collections gather Saturday, Feb. 20, for a symposium at the Art Institue of Chicago.

"Titled Modern Constructions--Creating Architecture and Design Collections," it features, among others, Paola Antonelli, senior curator at the Museum of Modern Art; Mirko Zardini, director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture; and the Art Institute's Joseph Rosa, chair of the museum's architecture and design department.